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Protestor Victoria Bernal shows off her phone with the message "BACKDOORS ENDANGER EVERYONE" outside of the Apple store in downtown Palo Alto, Calif., on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016. Protestors don't want Apple to give in to a court order issued commanding Apple to provide federal investigators with 'backdoor' software for an iPhone. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)

FILE - This Feb. 17, 2016 file photos an iPhone is seen in Washington. The dispute over whether Apple must help the FBI hack into a terror suspect's iPhone is about to play out in a Southern California courtroom. The hearing Tuesday, March 22, in U.S. District Court in Riverside is the first in the battle that has seen Cook and FBI Director James Comey spar over issues of privacy and national security. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster,File)

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FILE - In this April 30, 2015 file photo, Apple CEO Tim Cook responds to a question during a news conference at IBM Watson headquarters, in New York. The dispute over whether Apple must help the FBI hack into a terror suspect's iPhone is about to play out in a Southern California courtroom. The hearing Tuesday, March 22, in U.S. District Court in Riverside is the first in the battle that has seen Cook and FBI Director James Comey spar over issues of privacy and national security. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

The U.S. Justice Department disclosed Monday that it has managed to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone without help from Apple, ending a high-profile legal showdown with the company — for now.

Federal prosecutors did not say in court papers how they broke into the iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the attackers in the San Bernardino terror shootings in December that left 14 people dead, or what they found when they did.

But while the development ends the tense conflict between the FBI and Apple in a closely watched terrorism case, it is not expected to settle the larger legal and policy questions over encryption that have rocked Silicon Valley since the government demanded that one of the world’s most powerful companies hack its own security protections to aid law enforcement.

There remain similar FBI requests pending in federal courts around the nation, notably in New York, where federal prosecutors have pushed for an order to force Apple to unlock an iPhone in a drug case. In addition, the San Bernardino case provoked a political debate over Apple’s position, suggesting Congress may yet jump into the encryption issue.

Federal prosecutors notified Riverside-based U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym on Monday they were dropping the fight with Apple.

Given that Farook’s iPhone was an older model, the development raises questions about whether the unlocking method would be useful on Apple’s newer iPhones, which have even stronger encryption, including fingerprint identification. But some privacy advocates immediately worried that the FBI’s use of the new technique would spread, giving the government a fresh ability to undermine iPhone security.

In a statement Monday, Apple said it would “continue to help law enforcement with their investigations, as we have done all along, and we will continue to increase the security of our products as the threats and attacks on our data become more frequent and more sophisticated.”

Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned that Apple should be entitled to know precisely how the FBI penetrated the iPhone’s security. “If the FBI used a vulnerability to unlock the iPhone in the San Bernardino case … there should be a very strong bias in favor of informing Apple of the vulnerability,” he said. “That would allow Apple to fix the flaw and protect the security of all its users.”

The case took an unexpected turn last week, when federal prosecutors asked Pym on the eve of a much-anticipated hearing to postpone legal arguments between the FBI and Apple. The judge put the case on hold after federal investigators revealed another source may have found a way to hack the iPhone.

Multiple media reports subsequently said that an Israel-based security firm was the “outside party” providing the FBI with the technical assistance to unlock the iPhone. Monday’s legal filing suggests the FBI was able to crack the encrypted password protections, saying: “(The FBI) has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook’s iPhone.”

Whether the hack could be used to break into other iPhones would depend on whether the FBI got in via a flaw in Apple’s iOS operating system, or by copying hardware within the phone, said Kevin Mitnick, a formerly imprisoned criminal hacker who is now a high-profile cybersecurity consultant.

Mitnick said if the FBI got into the phone through copying hardware, newer devices would not be vulnerable to the same tactic. But he added that if the FBI exploited a flaw in Apple’s iOS9 operating system the hack could work against phones running the same iOS.

The Justice Department, in a statement, said it remains a “priority” to “obtain digital information to protect national security and public safety,” adding that law enforcement would continue to seek help from the courts when they do not get cooperation from companies or individuals.

Pym triggered the showdown between Apple and the FBI in February, when she tentatively ordered the Cupertino tech giant to unlock Farook’s iPhone.

Apple has warned that such an order would jeopardize the privacy rights of tens of millions of customers, prompting a national debate over the balancing act between the needs of law enforcement to solve crimes and hunt down terror suspects and the privacy rights of a public reliant on smartphones in everyday life.

The tech industry rallied behind Apple, with companies ranging from Google and Facebook to Microsoft and Snapchat warning that the government request posed a sweeping threat to privacy rights.

But law enforcement groups and the victims’ families sided with the FBI, saying Apple could assist federal investigators to aid in a crucial terrorism investigation without risking broader threats to consumer privacy.

It remains unclear whether the latest development will completely sidetrack Apple’s collision with the FBI. A federal judge in Brooklyn recently sided with Apple in a similar case, refusing to force the company to help the FBI by unlocking an iPhone in a drug case.

Federal prosecutors previously indicated they were appealing that order, and are due on Tuesday to file further updates in the New York case. Apple disclosed in that case that it has faced at least a dozen similar requests to unlock iPhones in federal courts around the country.

Apple and many legal observers have argued that Congress, not the courts, should resolve the nettlesome questions surrounding the encryption issue.

Staff writer Ethan Baron contributed to this report. Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236 or follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz.